Now The white goat is as far as we can tell younger than our black one, who is also the head goat in our tiny herd. She's always chasing the white one (Milkshake) off the feed while she (Momma) is eating. The little one is our buckling Oreo, he's still too small to do his job, but I doubt the girls care right now.
I don't know how many people saw back when we got our first flock here how we called the chicks "food tv" for our cats. But.. we got new programming on the "food tv".
It's the Cornish Cross show, I was in the farm store with Silver picking up a couple things when they brought them into the store. Silver thought it was funny, my head when up as soon as I heard the peeping from them and I started scanning the store to see where they were. These guys are going to be an experiment to see if it is worth the cost to raise a bunch next year for the freezer. That's why there is only 6 now, we had considered getting 12.
Speaking of chickens...
This Is a picture of about 1/3 of our current laying flock. I unfortunately have about 5-6 roosters in there and they are getting reduced to 2 roosters next week. That white bucket in the foreground is a feeder Silver made for them out of a 5 gallon pail and a feed bowl. He bolted the two together and cut some holes in the bottom of the sides of the bucket and it is now a 5 gallon chicken feeder. The two leghorns in the picture are roosters as is the bird in the doorway, we're keeping the one in the doorway he's a mix) because he is just so huge.
Here is the other one we are keeping:
It's a turken, we got two of these roosters and two hens of this breed and after watching all of the boys I noticed the turkens are built massively. Also this turken and that mixed rooster (I call him pretty boy and once I can get a pic you'll know why) are the most vigorous breeders in the batch of roosters. So it was size of the bird and behavior that determined which roosters are going to be put in the freezer verses left with the ladies.
I have the chicken coop in the same location it was though the yard got an upgrade,
The tarp is up over the coop and part of the yard partly to keep the tarp from getting torn and to help the roof which needs repair. We bent rebar for the "hoops", we also used pieces of wood at the bottom to hold the chicken wire down with rebar stakes hammered into the ground which will also prevent anybody from digging into the yard. We also now have a full sized door on the yard instead of having to bend in half to go into the yard. All of the chicken wire is the same fencing we had on the old yard reused on this one.
That next building is the new rabbitry with those 2 barrels there to store food for birds and rabbits.
Except for the 2 cages on the upper right everything was gotten from one person. The cage 'condo' on the left side is a multi lab cage that can be broken down into 6 cages when you put dividers in. We temporarily have just tarps on this structure, we're going to put some wood up on the sides to keep the wind down, we're trying to figure out if we'll need a heater int here or not for the winter as they are all New Zeland and New Zeland crosses.
This is Harriet,
I love her coloring, I am hoping when I breed her, that her color will be in her babies as I personally love that silver grey fur. I am hoping at least down the line to keep the furs off of the ones we butcher for projects. She's under a year old so I have a few years of breeding her to try for more with her color.
We do have one top notch animal in this bunch.
This is Ziggy, he came with a pedigree and an ear tattoo that is on his opposite ear. I am going to be putting does in front of him this week as we have cooler weather this week so we should have fully functioning boys this week. Seems the bucks' equipment doesn't work well when it hits over 90 degrees. The only colored rabbit I have is Harriet everyone else is a white New Zeland, and we're trying to figure out what she might be.
I am working on trying to switch the rabbits to forage feeding over pellet food, as I'd rather cut them some food myself than have to buy it. We had gotten some geese from the person we got the rabbits from too but they wandered off. Which I did expect, and was figuring I'd have to get some goose eggs to hatch next spring so we have friendly ones to guard our yard.
Well I need to get moving, as it's taken me an hour to set this post up due to pictures and I am still cutting firewood for this winter as our chain saw was out of commission this spring so we're half our wood behind. Though pretty soon we'll have it all and will be chopping/cutting wood for next year.
Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...
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